enabling Personal Gallery and Blog for members

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unable to enable personal galleries and blogs to membershai

hai everybody!

i have been trying to sort this out the past week in vain so thought i could use some help. i enabled the personal gallery and blog options while installing, and allowed appropriate global and user permissions too but these two somehow doesnt show up. is there anything else i should do? i would greatly apppreciate your kind help. thanks.

Members will need access to the CMS zone. When they visit that zone, they'll see icons for adding news or gallery content, and there'll be personal category options for them there. If you want to make it simpler for them, you might include a direct link to the add screens from your front page or menus.Galleries and blogs are linked to on each member profile view screen.

If not, please let us know how we can do better (please try and propose any bigger ideas in such a way that they are fundable and scalable).

If so, please let others know about ocPortal whenever you see the opportunity.

If my reply is too Vulcan or expressed too much in business-strategy terms, and not particularly personal, I apologise. As a company & project maintainer, time is very limited to me, so usually when I write a reply I try and make it generic advice to all readers. I'm also naturally a joined-up thinker, so I always express my thoughts in combined business and technical terms. I recognise not everyone likes that, don't let my Vulcan-thinking stop you enjoying ocPortal on fun personal projects.

If my response can inspire a community tutorial, that's a great way of giving back to the project as a user.

enabling personal galleries

thanks a lottt! it never struck me users need access to CMS page for that..thanks. i did that however i still seem to have a problem…personal blog category now appears on its own for adding news, but personal gallery option doesnt. user doesnt have the 'add gallery' option..all he can do it to add image/video to the 'root' gallery. i changed user type and global permissions for 'gallery' to high but this too didnt work . sorry if its very dumb!

Not dumb at all, I've been so bogged down with the details I've neglected to look more closely at this issue - but the entire point of me getting this script is to provide a personal blog and gallery for my members, if they've earnt the points to have them.

I have a dumber question - if a user buys something with their points, could that force them to drop down a level and lose their blog?

I know its in the wizard but I am unable to find out how to set it up.

I run http://otakuplayground.com and am hopping to make themes and other things for ocportal even though I no longer use it for otakuplayground.com I still love it and feel it could go far with the right help. It needs themes and needs people to advertise for it.

Well I noticed we have the content management thingy enabled on THIS site, so just tried creating a blog.

Seemed to work, though will have to wait and see if my lil blog entry was "valid".

I noticed 2 serious issues.

1. As a user I actually have all the icons for admin - can't use them, but it seems weird that a user can peer at the back-end of the site?

2. more serious, I notice I got the "There's a tutorial for this feature" thingy.

Seriously, you just lost any real chance of me purchasing this script.

There is absolutely no point in me purchasing a script and working on it - and then sending my members to this website to show them they too could have the same site, for this much, in "one hour"!

That totally destroys my credibility. I may as well just use Invision and leave the Invision logo on it.

Most of the little bugs and irritations I've put up with but that's a real sales killer. You're not going to compete head on with Invision or Vbulletin, you're script just isn't polished enough. But as a special, unique site, sure…. but no, not with "off the shelf script" writ large.

IPB has a few annoying things in my opinion so seeing them in ocPortal means nothing to me, and I have used IPB for a long time. I have just tweaking it to do what I want.

I run http://otakuplayground.com and am hopping to make themes and other things for ocportal even though I no longer use it for otakuplayground.com I still love it and feel it could go far with the right help. It needs themes and needs people to advertise for it.

well dateofbirth 4 me ocportal has been exceptional…the best i have seen so far. im surely sticking with ocportal even if its going to take me more time to set a few things to work..at the end of it im sure it will be worth it.

so expert ocportal users pls help me out with in achieving it….

right now i'm stuck with enabling personal gallery to users….those who have done it before or know how to do it kindly provide me with a checklist of steps….thank u very much!!

Yeah, I may use it too - my point is I have no interest in the payment option.

I was looking for a script to buy, then found this one free. Nice, but to me the freebie was just a demo, before paying.

When I came here I SPECIFICALLY ASKED if the branding was removed upon purchase, as I'm sick to death of companies trying to sneak their little sales message in TO MY WEBSITE.

You want to advertise on my website, YOU PAY ME.

I don't think it's lack of research and not finding this script mbut finding it, finding branding all over it and not bothering to purchase.

This, for all intents and purposes, is free open source software. You may as well stick the GPL license on it as few are going to buy it.

I either have to leave my visitors to figure out this complex system, or give them a tutorial that links them to where they too could have a free website, in one hour.

Why on Earth would they want a blog, profile or anything else I can offer - WHEN THEY CAN HAVE THEIR OWN FREAKING WEBSITE? 99% of them won't do so but any ideas of me giving them something special just went down the toilet.

There's no point me spending time or money customising this, as each and every visitor is going to think it's a freebie.

So remind me again why I'd pay for it?

"To support the developers"???

Yeah, sure. Not.

Here's a little tip: It is never, ever, about the developers or even the software - it is all about the customer. The ONLY place it is about you is on the "About us" page. Period.

I've spent the better part of a week fiddling around with this thing when I may as well just leave the defaults and with the logo on it.

Ironically, from wanting to help out I've shifted to considering customising it to the point of hacking out the tutorials completely - and hoping this company goes down the pan so few others get the script!

There's a huge demand for a cript like this - but NOT in it's current form. It's not commercially viable. Use it, perhaps, pay for it.. why?

dateofBirth,I agree with most of what you are saying but I have already paid for this script and still think it is better than all the others I have tried. Though I think they should get rid of the ridiculous claim that you can have a website in under an hour.

I believe you can switch off the tutorials via one of the php files. I remember someone asking about that farther down this forum.

personal gallery for members

can someone pls help me out with enabling personal gallery for members pls? Chris pointed out to me that users need access to CMS and the personal blog options and gallery options will be present there on. while the blog option did, adding a personal gallery is still giving me a miss….

As I said I am not sure how to reenable personal gallries with out rerunning the wizard. I looked a little more last night and still could not find it.

I will also make a comment on the other part of this convo. I might be weird but I Paid for the product and saw it took off the ads back to ocPortal so I coded them back in. Also a lot of places make you pay for copyright removal and that is honestly how I saw that.

I run http://otakuplayground.com and am hopping to make themes and other things for ocportal even though I no longer use it for otakuplayground.com I still love it and feel it could go far with the right help. It needs themes and needs people to advertise for it.

Because non of the staff has posted in the thread I would sugest running the set up as there is an option in there to turn it on. I am sorry I could not find any other way.

I run http://otakuplayground.com and am hopping to make themes and other things for ocportal even though I no longer use it for otakuplayground.com I still love it and feel it could go far with the right help. It needs themes and needs people to advertise for it.

Yes, some script companies will charge extra for all branding removal because they know that has a value.

What they don't do is charge for branding removal, then leave their branding scattered throughout the script, with direct links back to the script company.

Having said that, some do try and creep it in - and regularly get slammed by businessmen contemplating their product across blogs and forums everywhere. This is a new age, one irate customer can reach thousands, their ire available on search engines for years to come. "We can change these policies at any time" is another one that sends business web owners looking elsewhere.

To sell you need some idea of the market you're selling to. Something given away for free and even when paid for has branding and even links all over it isn't something worth paying for. The very people who'd pay for such a script are the exact same people who'd want ZERO branding on the product. Sure, an enthusiast like yourself may pay but to truly market this it needs to aim at businessmen. Casual owners who just want a site don't want to pay.

I respect this script, perhaps I'm a purist but it annoyed the heck out of me to see such a silly and un-necessary flaw. Then again I look at software both for usuability and market/customer value. To me it is still potentially viable, but only because I know I can get someone from Romania or India to customise it cheaply. In fairness part of my anger was feeling betrayed, having only just considered putting my time and effort into helping the makers tune the product.

If this company want to make more money with this here's some quick and dirty advice - treble the price and on the front page of the advertising state boldy and clearly that unique sites can be created and there is absolutely no branding. Viola, you have what paying customers are looking for.

It doesn't matter how much you customise and make your site unique, if it has the branding on there then it's just another OC site, like anyone and everyone else's OC site. You may be the only person on the entire planet with an OC portal site but you leave the branding on there and for all intents and purposes they're everywhere and nothing special.

Anyway, forget it, it's to my own benefit if this script doesn't sell, then I get a unique site. I'm here for customer support, not to keep gasping in dismay at poor marketing and design and trying to help. From now on I'm just a normal customer - "what's in it for me?"

Well I work on web pages for fun. I as I said I do not know how with out running the wizard.

I run http://otakuplayground.com and am hopping to make themes and other things for ocportal even though I no longer use it for otakuplayground.com I still love it and feel it could go far with the right help. It needs themes and needs people to advertise for it.

We don't think of those links as branding: the links themselves don't have the ocPortal logo, or any brand-specific information, and they only point to our servers so that the tutorials people see are the most current.

We do, however, understand your concerns, and that's why you can easily remove the "There's a tutorial" links by modifying the templates.

Just let me get clear on this - does that mean contributing to the site and earning points only affects their rank, not their ability to buy stuff?

There was an incorrect explanation in this topic for a few minutes before I deleted it.

You buy stuff with points. Your rank goes up with points. However, the rank is calculated by 'total points ever', not 'total remaining points' – that number can never go down.

but personal gallery option doesnt

Personal galleries are stored underneath a gallery set to be a personal gallery container. You either need to add a new gallery which is as such, or edit the root gallery to be a container itself.The purpose of all this is that the system supports multiple personal galleries, in a tree structure. It's explained in more detail in the advanced gallery tutorial.

As I said I am not sure how to reenable personal gallries with out rerunning the wizard. I looked a little more last night and still could not find it.

There's a specific-permission to enable.

As a user I actually have all the icons for admin - can't use them, but it seems weird that a user can peer at the back-end of the site?

We haven't bothered hiding things on this site, but it's perfectly possible to do so by setting permissions.

dateofbirth said

more serious, I notice I got the "There's a tutorial for this feature" thingy.Nice try, no thanks.When I came here I SPECIFICALLY ASKED if the branding was removed upon purchase, as I'm sick to death of companies trying to sneak their little sales message in TO MY WEBSITE.

We don't place the tutorial link there to try and sell ocPortal to people – we place it there so people can learn how to use the system. Hiding the fact that ocPortal is used is not one of our core considerations for a default site, simply because for the majority of users, it isn't an issue; being able to know the software used actually helps the users of those users use the user's websites better. You may, if you wish, disable the help panel via template editing.If you're running a business website via ocPortal, you absolutely should go through screens to make sure they are suitable to users, and make any changes as necessary - ocPortal's a huge cost saving compared to custom designing a site, and doing perhaps a dozen template edits is a very small 'price' to pay for the huge saving you make. Frankly, if you expect a perfectly tailored site, for a business, for next to no cost, you're asking too much – especially if you're trying to keep all that secret from your users.

There's a lot more vitriol in this topic about this, but it all comes back to one thing – the assumption that our target market is one of people making private company communities that look custom built. We never recommended ocPortal based on that assumption or selling point. ocPortal is about making interactive websites, for whoever might want them, and customisation is required if you have extra needs to be met that aren't advertised as selling points. A lot of company community websites do actually use software that contains very clear branding, and these are closer to our target market. Still, linking to our tutorials hosted on our server isn't branding, it's a pragmatic measure to avoid placing 15MB of extra material into our distribution.

We could, if we wanted to, target this more strongly to some specific class of business need - but we don't want to, because it'd be limiting, and it'd work out immensely more expensive for each customer. ocPortal is about providing universal technology to empower people. If we did target it (allowing it to be 'polished' design-wise, ease-of-use-wise and business-wide), we'd end up having some kind of huge gap in functionality there for almost every user (almost every user has very substantial unique needs) – and we'd have to charge huge amounts to each user to fill these needs. Simpler software doesn't have the problem, because it isn't so ambitious – it does have the problem though that it simply can't get anywhere close to achieving what can be achieved with ocPortal. Everything about ocPortal is designed to empower people by allowing them to get everything they need for substantially cheaper - the tradeoff is that those who want things more tailored, have to put in more time customising.

Though I think they should get rid of the ridiculous claim that you can have a website in under an hour.

You can have a website like the demo installed on your own server in an hour, customised with your own colour scheme and personal details. We're not claiming that websites that deviate heavily from the defaults, or contain a lot of custom content, can be done in one hour ('a website', not 'any website').

If not, please let us know how we can do better (please try and propose any bigger ideas in such a way that they are fundable and scalable).

If so, please let others know about ocPortal whenever you see the opportunity.

If my reply is too Vulcan or expressed too much in business-strategy terms, and not particularly personal, I apologise. As a company & project maintainer, time is very limited to me, so usually when I write a reply I try and make it generic advice to all readers. I'm also naturally a joined-up thinker, so I always express my thoughts in combined business and technical terms. I recognise not everyone likes that, don't let my Vulcan-thinking stop you enjoying ocPortal on fun personal projects.

If my response can inspire a community tutorial, that's a great way of giving back to the project as a user.